Article content
Police seized thousands of pot plants and more than 300 kilograms of cannabis from a property southwest of St. Thomas.
Article content
The Ontario Provincial Police-led joint cannabis enforcement team launched an investigation after Health Canada, the country’s pot regulator, alerted them to a location on Talbot Line near Coyne Road in Elgin County that was associated with three expired licences to grow medicinal marijuana, the OPP said on Thursday.
Article content
Police searched the residential property on Nov. 28, seizing 6,060 cannabis plants and 345 kilograms of processed pot, police said on Thursday.
Health Canada rules govern the production of medical marijuana. Prescription pot users can buy their supply from a licensed producer, grow it themselves or appoint someone to do it for them. As many as four designated growers can have an unlimited number of cannabis plants at the same location, which doesn’t require municipal approval, nor is it subject to zoning and building-code compliance.
But police say criminals often use this system to grow cannabis to sell on the black market.
The OPP didn’t say whether anyone has been arrested or charged in the Elgin County case.
“The investigation is ongoing,” the OPP said in a statement on Thursday.
Established in 2018, the cannabis enforcement team – made up of police officers from nearly a dozen forces across Ontario – was originally focused on cracking down on illegal brick-and-mortar pot shops.
Since most of those businesses have shuttered, with the exception of dispensaries claiming to be Indigenous-run, the police unit has shifted its focus to the illegal growers supplying the illicit market.
dcarruthers@postmedia.com
@DaleatLFPress
Recommended from Editorial
Share this article in your social network
